Similar Stories to The Inflation Reduction Act’s Biggest Winners? Swing States. on Bing News

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The seven swing states that will decide the upcoming election have received nearly half of the torrent of clean energy manufacturing dollars unleashed by a landmark 2022 climate bill, a new analysis shows, amid stuttering Democratic efforts to translate new factory jobs into political support. Since the passage of clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a bill called the “most significant climate law in the history of mankind” by Joe Biden, nearly $150 billion has been announced for a flurry of new American facilities producing electric cars, batteries, and components for renewable energy. Of this, $63 billion, or nearly half, will flow to just seven states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that form the battleground fought over by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for November’s presidential election, bringing more than 50,000 new manufacturing jobs, according to an analysis carried out for the Guardian by Atlas Public Policy. “We thought it would be a big step forward on clean energy, but honestly we never understood how quickly it would turn into a game changer.” “The steady drumbeat of announcements over the past two years has been remarkable, and time and time again they are going to swing states,” said Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst at Atlas. “The election will decide the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act and the election will be decided by the states that have benefitted the most from the manufacturing incentives in the law.” Two years on, the IRA has delivered “the biggest US economic revolution in generations—and it’s all because America finally, finally decided to do something about climate change,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a nonpartisan business group. Nearly half a trillion dollars in total public and private investment, when deployment of wind and solar farms is included, has occurred nationally, creating more than 300,000 new jobs.